Every year, the Consortium for Worker Education and our partners train thousands of New Yorkers for new professions and place them into career jobs. The aspiring workers have the will and our teachers have the expertise, but one more ingredient is usually needed for the job training and placement programs to succeed. Wrap-around services, including childcare, housing, and transportation assistance can make the difference for workers to be able to focus on their training and settle into their careers.

New York City is internationally known as the quintessential immigrant city. More than 3 million city residents were born in other countries. For centuries, the city has been the first stop for many migrants, whether they ended up settling here or other parts of America. Supporting these new neighbors has never been easy, but the influx of migrants in recent months has challenged city agencies and community service providers.

New York City workers are struggling. According to recent reports, the city is unlikely to recover the one million jobs lost during the pandemic until 2024 or 2025. At times like these, many New Yorkers turn to their community-based organizations for help. Thanks to the City Council's funding for the Jobs to Build On, Worker Service Centers, and Immigrant Protection Group programs, neighborhood organizations are able to provide job training and placement services to help New Yorkers succeed in their career dreams.

The holiday season is an opportunity to reflect on what we are grateful for and give back to our community. At CWE, we want to acknowledge the work that our partners in labor and community organizations do throughout the year to support New York City’s workers. Tens of thousands of our neighbors have great careers and economically-stable lives because of these institutions.

In 2019, the Consortium for Worker Education created a new initiative, the Astoria Worker Project, to test whether an infusion of new resources into a neighborhood and greater networking between existing community organizations could make a difference in empowering workers.

Help is on the way for New Yorkers seeking a union job in the transportation sector. The Consortium for Worker Education and partners in government, labor, and business are launching a new workforce training program, New York City Pathways to Industrial and Construction Careers (PINCC).

For over 20 years, CSKILLS has provided pre-apprenticeship training and direct entry access to unionized apprenticeship programs for public high school graduating seniors and adult residents of New York City.

These City Council programs have made a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of New Yorkers. In the upcoming City budget, the City Council has the opportunity to reinvest in workforce development and continue providing good jobs for our communities.

Jobs to Build On, Worker Service Centers, and Immigration Protection Group have provided job training, career placement, and other services to tens of thousands of workers.

On March 7, the City Council’s Committee on Small Business, chaired by Council Member Julie Menin, held an oversight hearing on how the New York City Department of Small Business Services (SBS) has responded to the crisis to support New York businesses and workers. CWE provided written testimony to the committee on the work of the CWE network of labor unions and community organizations that are helping workers recover from the COVID recession.

Last year, the Governor’s office declared a first-in-the-nation gun violence disaster emergency in New York. Gun violence is concentrated in neighborhoods that have faced decades of disinvestment. To provide young people in New York City communities with pathways away from gun violence and toward viable employment and career opportunities, CWE partnered with the New York State Department of Labor to create the CWE Young Adult Gun Violence Prevention Program.

To support young New Yorkers, the Consortium for Worker Education is partnering with the New York City Department of Small Business Services to launch License 2 Careers. The new two year program will work with young people ages 18-24 to build skills and place them into jobs in the unionized public and private transportation sector.

The New York City Council has been a leading voice for New York City’s forgotten workers. The City Council founded three programs, Jobs to Build On, Worker Service Centers, and Immigration Protection Group, to fund workforce development and protection services for the New York communities most in need. These programs, administered by CWE in partnership with dozens of community organizations around the city, deliver life changing services to thousands of residents every year.

Industries that formed the employment core for New York City before the pandemic, like hospitality and tourism, have been among the hardest hit by the pandemic. The incoming City Council, which is increasingly diverse and representative of New York’s varied neighborhoods, has an opportunity to tackle the monumental challenge of a COVID recovery for all workers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a twin public health and economic crisis across the globe. To understand the economic trends that have come out of the pandemic and what response is needed in New York, the State Assembly Labor Committee held a hearing on November 15th.

Bronx workers face many challenges in realizing their economic dreams. SoBro was founded five decades ago to help them overcome those obstacles and build stable careers for their families and communities.

To stem the gun violence and begin to give residents resources to reduce their own risk, New York is investing millions of dollars across the state in workforce service providers so that unemployed young adults have viable employment and career opportunities. In New York City, the new program will be implemented by the Consortium for Worker Education and a network of neighborhood-level partners, funded under the New York State Department of Labor.

Census statistics released this month show that 8.8 million people now live in the five boroughs. The 629,000 person increase is due in part to the influx of immigrants and other transplants who have moved to New York over the last ten years, but much credit goes to city leaders and the hundreds of community organizations who fought through federal threats and the pandemic to ensure every New Yorker was counted.

The New York City Council restored funding for key job training programs to pre-pandemic levels in the recently passed city budget.